Morning Report: Mayor Gloria Sacks Climate Director
EM - News Moderator 
The person spearheading the city’s fight against climate change is officially out.
Shelby Buso, now former chief sustainability officer, confirmed that Mayor Todd Gloria’s administration ousted her on Tuesday.
Pattern: Gloria essentially eliminated the office of sustainability in February due to budget pressure and spread its work across five different departments. He also eliminated multiple climate positions for a savings of nearly $1 million.
Climate activists are pissed.
“What irritates me is (the city) won’t acknowledge they’re deprioritizing this. Don’t gaslight us that everything is great and we’re still doing it all,” one person said.
Mayor Says AI and Tech Could Help City’s Police Department
Mayor Todd Gloria pitched AI and drones as “force multipliers” that could save the San Diego Police Department time and money at Politifest last Saturday.
As our Bella Ross writes: “The mayor specifically mentioned two controversial technologies employed by the Chula Vista Police Department: police drones and a new program that will use AI to write first drafts of police reports based on body camera footage.”
In theory, these technologies could help officers prioritize calls and cut down on tedious paperwork. But, as Ross writes, “critics say police drones pose concerns about privacy and unlawful spying, and that generative AI is still too prone to errors and bias.”
How to Solve the Housing Crisis? Declare Statewide Emergency
One developer thinks he has a novel idea for solving the housing crisis: Declare a statewide emergency.
North County developer Sean Kilkenny said the best way for the state to build more homes would be for Gov. Gavin Newsom to declare the official emergency, reports our Tigist Layne.
The declaration would allow all permits that comply with local general plans to be approved ministerially. That means projects would not have to go through a political approval process.
“Why else do we have general plans and zoning laws if we’re not going to use them,” Kilkenny said.
Read the full North County Report here.
Councilmember and Former Boss Respond to Our Article
Councilmember Foster issued a statement on social media about our article from last week. We wrote about how he was fired from the city in 2016.
He did not respond to a request for comment on the story.
“As an Equal Opportunity Program Manager, I upheld the city’s own policy: refusing to support contracts that discriminate against minority and women-owned businesses,” he said in the social media post. “I did my job well, which meant taking a stand against documented inequity. Unfortunately, I was punished for it.”
County Supervisor Monica Montgomery Steppe also chimed in with a statement on Facebook. Foster worked as Montgomery Steppe’s chief of staff during her time on the Council.
“Reading between the lines, it is clear that the accountability consistently upheld by Henry and me has now become a convenient justification for this City administration to pull strings behind the scenes and orchestrate unfounded political smears,” she said in a statement on Facebook.
Supervisor Pledges to Save Community Garden
San Diego County Supervisor Paloma Aguirre on Tuesday told anxious gardeners from the Tijuana River Valley Community Garden that county officials are working to find a way for gardeners to keep their plots after the agency currently managing the garden abruptly sent the gardeners eviction notices last week.
Aguirre briefed gardeners about county efforts to preserve the garden at a packed town hall she held Tuesday evening at the San Ysidro Library.
Aguirre told gardeners the county does not have the capacity to manage the garden itself but would seek to find either a new manager or a way for gardeners to manage the garden themselves.
The previous manager, a small agricultural resources agency that promotes sustainable land uses in San Diego County, pulled out and sent eviction notices to gardeners after agency directors became alarmed about rising levels of pollution in the Tijuana River Valley.
The agency’s executive director told Voice of San Diego on Monday it was actually Aguirre’s efforts to raise awareness about pollution that caused agency directors to worry about health risks and legal liability for gardeners and their own staff employees.
Aguirre told gardeners on Tuesday the county would consider installing air quality sensors at the garden, which could warn gardeners when toxic gases emanating from the river made it unsafe to garden.
Nanzi Muro, a gardener who has been helping to organize gardeners’ response to the eviction threat, said she was heartened by Aguirre’s assurances at the town hall.
“I’m really happy she heard us,” Muro said. “Now I want to see the action.”
National City Council Punts on Biofuels
A marathon debate over a controversial industrial project in National City ended inconclusively late Tuesday when City Councilmembers, visibly exhausted as the clock neared 1 a.m., postponed a vote on a biofuels transfer station that would draw round-the-clock truck traffic to a mixed-use neighborhood on the city’s west side.
Councilmembers asked city planning staff to see whether the project’s Texas-based developer could convert the transfer station to a zero-emissions operation.
The postponement followed roughly two hours of impassioned testimony from dozens of city residents and environmental activists, who said the project would generate traffic and pollution in a neighborhood already suffering from high levels of asthma and other chronic conditions.
The Council plans to resume debate Nov. 4.
In Other News
- Cynthia Paes, the county’s registrar of voters, plans to retire after the November election. (Union-Tribune)
- The government shutdown is impacting operations at airports, but all is well at the San Diego International Airport, for now, KPBS reports.
- The Chula Vista City Council approved a 50-megawatt battery storage facility.
The Morning Report was written by Will Huntsberry, Mariana Martínez Barba and Jim Hinch. It was edited by Andrea Sanchez-Villafaña.
The post Morning Report: Mayor Gloria Sacks Climate Director appeared first on Voice of San Diego.
